you were real, just like an itch that one is unable to scratch
Now that you’ve left me, you tell me that of course we’ll always be friends; but I’m not sure I want that sort of friendship. Hello, how are you, I’m fine, have a nice day: is this what it all comes down to? Interchangeable selves in a perfectly uniform world, so that one fuck, one lover, is just as good as another? That’s your ideal of transparent communication: everything already agreed to in advance, so there’s no danger of misunderstanding or conflict. I would have nothing to tell you in such a world, and you would mean nothing special to me. How convenient for you! It’s precisely for this that Acker/Laure reproaches Bataille: “You believe that everything that’s outside you (‘reality’) is a reflection of your perceptions, thoughts, ideas, etc. In other words, that you can see, feel, hear, understand the world. Other people.” You think that all our problems could easily be resolved, if only we would sit around and talk them through calmly. Well, maybe friends converse that way, but surely lovers do not… That first night, you tied me up, and left me alone in the dark. I don’t know how long I was suspended there, waiting for your return. It was “a time without negation, without decision… without end, without beginning… without a future” (Blanchot)… All my inhibitions crumbled; there was room only for your absence. I realized that “the opposite of love is indifference, not hate” (Kathe Koja), and that the only true opposite of fantasy is pain. You were real, just like an itch that one is unable to scratch. If you didn’t come back to release me, well, that was only to be expected: for there are never enough sadists for the masochists we mostly are. But I comforted myself by recalling Laurie Weeks’ Theory of Total Humiliation: “we don’t erect monolithic reified barriers against the humiliation; rather we welcome it, embrace it; then everyone wants to fuck us, for mysterious reasons.”
- Steven Shaviro writing on Acker as/on Bataille’s lover Laure on Bataille (via ms. low)
Edit: I found this interesting, although it does not pertain to my present life. So I don’t get more emails/phone calls: still with danny; things are great; thanks.
